They can need it all day, anyone who has a top line center (unless they’ve secretly asked out too) isn’t trading them for PLD. It makes no sense. Teams looking to acquire PLD are looking to ADD a center, so expecting them to subtract one is counterintuitive. Center prospects are a different story; you may get a Kotka or Chytil, but not an established top six center. Which has nothing to do with the value of PLD. It’s just logistics and common sense. No team looking to add a current top six center has spare top six centers to include, otherwise they wouldn’t be looking to add one.
Columbus is realistically going to be best suited taking the biggest, bestest package they can get, regardless of position and then deciding, between the pieces they just acquired and those already on their roster, what they want to keep and which parts to put into a package to go out and acquire their new top C via a secondary trade. For example, you get a 22 year old established 3/4 Dman with further upside, an A+ level winger prospect and a 1st from a team that has dismal center depth but is willing to give up some great pieces to add a center. You then turn around and package the Dman, the 1st and maybe one of your own prospects and sent them to a team that’s about to enter a rebuild and has a 26 year old 1C whose age may not fit the timeline with the window.
You end up with a 1C from a different team to replace PLD and the A+ prospect from the first trade while flipping the other parts. That’s probably the more likely path by which Columbus emerges with a replacement C.